


Against the Tempest

by JaneTurenne



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the day of Inspector Lestrade's retirement, he and Holmes discuss the past and the future. <br/>(Gen, but includes brief, inexplicit references to m/m relationships)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against the Tempest

For Elaby

 

_Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest_  
King Lear, III.2.liii

 

Lestrade has never been able to stand having a fuss made over him. These past four decades he's done his job faithfully, and as well as he knew how. In his opinion, the least they could have done is _not_ insisted on some ridiculous to-do as they push him, gently but firmly, out of the world that has been his life for as long as matters. It'd be bad enough just having to suffer through this silly little shindig, to smile and eat cake and accept with good grace a gold watch too fine for him to use (his old one has run faithfully for thirty-five years, and he's never wanted another) and which he won't possibly be able to bring himself to pawn. But with what seems to Lestrade like a show of deliberate malice--though he knows it's neither more nor less than friendly incompetency--they seem to have determined to make the whole thing just as unbearable for him as it can possibly be.

To begin with, they've pulled Chief Inspector Gregson out of mothballs, forcing Lestrade to stare at just what five years' retirement does to a man of the Yard. Gregson has lost weight, unhealthily so, and his eyes, which were always faraway but once supremely alive, are beginning to go dark. Lestrade fights not to shudder at the sight. That insufferable Baynes has been dragged out of the country, and spends his time alternately lecturing about method in stentorian tones, and complaining about how much he hates London. Peter Jones sits quietly in a corner, nursing the leg wound that invalided him out of active duty long ago, but it is not that old scar that makes Peter such a tragic figure; it's the absence of his elder brother and best friend, who only a few weeks ago would have been sitting beside him. Lestrade misses Athelney too. The man was an arrogant cuss, there's no doubt about that, but he always did know how to laugh.

The other absences are as conspicuous as the presences. Bradstreet, a kind soul who has long been Lestrade's closest friend on the force, is away to the north investigating a series of gruesome murders. Lanner is in London, but his kidnapping case won't wait, and MacDonald, whose good humor would have been very much preferable to Baynes' dullness, retired a year ago himself, and couldn't be coaxed down to the city. Hopkins, who in his mellower middle age is now practically bearable, is present in body, but his wife is so heavy with their third baby--and had such a hard time with the second--that he barely manages to call Lestrade by the right name, his head is so far away.

The rest of the congregation consists mostly of a handful of newcomers putting in dutiful appearances, some of them fresh-faced youths who Lestrade barely knows from Adam. There are only two faces that make the room more bearable. MacPherson, bless the man, is as fidgety in Lestrade's presence as ever (Lestrade supposes he _does_ have cause), but when Lestrade admits--out loud, yet!--that he'll actually miss the blighter, MacPherson forgets his nerves so far as to smile. And then there is Doctor Watson, whose presence always makes life more comfortable. When Watson catches up with Lestrade and glances over his own shoulder in surprise, Lestrade knows that Mr. Holmes must, at least, have made it through the door, and even if he's already escaped, that's enough to be touching, in its way. Watson's manners, as always, are as genial as his friend's are appalling. Lestrade only wishes the doctor were _less_ polite, for after a quarter of an hour's pleasant conversation he cordially begs Lestrade's pardon for keeping him so long from his fellow Yarders, retreating in pursuit of a glass of tea, and Lestrade is left stranded in this sea of well-mannered discomfort once more.

Men who do not know him well expect Gabriel Lestrade to curse his own lack of inches, reduced as he is to craning upwards at so many of his peers, especially since the advent of height limits on the force. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lestrade loves being small, loves the freedom it gives him to fade from notice when he pleases. It's a trait that has saved his life more than once so far, and he swears it saves him again that day. If he'd had to stay in that room for the remaining hour of that torture his now ex-fellows call a party, Lestrade can't imagine he wouldn't at least have _tried_ to end it all. As it is, however, he manages--theoretical center of attention or no--to evade everyone's notice for the few critical seconds to slip off into his own office and shut the door.

Lestrade thinks he's finally reached a safe haven. And then a pair of familiar eyes as grey as a London winter are fixed on him, and Mr. Holmes drawls, not unkindly, "_Et tu_, Lestrade?"

"Something like that," Lestrade replies wearily. Mr. Holmes is in the visitor's chair, the one he's occupied many times, and Lestrade walks around to the chair which is no longer technically his own, the one he's occupied far more times still.

"Aren't you meant to be out enjoying your party, Inspector?" Holmes asks, giving Lestrade the look that goes all the way through his skin and out the other side.

"I might ask you the same question, Mr. Holmes. And I'm not an inspector anymore. Just Mr. Lestrade, now."

Holmes raises an eyebrow, but chooses not to comment on Lestrade's bit of diversion. "Not _precisely_ the same question, as it is not _my_ party. And no, I am not meant to be enjoying it. I am meant to be languishing here under protest, behaving in a childishly petulant fashion, which is precisely what I am doing. No offense to you, of course, Lestrade."

"None taken, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade replies, and means it. "I'd be anywhere other than here, too, if I could. You don't have a cigarette, do you?"

"Even better," Holmes says, pulling a pair of cigars and a box of matches from his inner jacket pocket. "But I thought the Yard frowned on smoking indoors?"

"Do they?" Lestrade affects ignorance. "I wouldn't be expected to know such things, Mr. Holmes. I'm only a civilian, after all."

"And I only an amateur detective," Holmes replies with a smile, passing Lestrade one of the cigars and striking a match for him. That first breath makes the world a very great deal brighter, somehow. Lestrade decides that perhaps he has reached his safe haven after all.

For a minute or two they smoke in silence, enjoying the comfortable companionship which it has taken them so many years to achieve. Lestrade knows precisely where their relationship stands, and so, he's sure, does Mr. Holmes. Lestrade has always thought Mr. Holmes a reckless, arrogant, superior eccentric who doesn't deserve to get lucky half so often as he does, and he thinks so still; Mr. Holmes has always thought Lestrade a proud, plodding, uninspired dullard who can't see beyond his own nose, and he thinks so still. But they've fought by each other's sides, and seen each other through hard times and good, and saved each other's lives. And so they're friends, now, anyhow, and that's all there is to say about it.

It is Mr. Holmes who finally speaks. "You'll pardon me, Lestrade, if the deduction is premature, but you don't seem to be anticipating your life of leisure with joy and exaltation. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"And you'll pardon me, Mr. Holmes, mentioning that, as deductions go, that was hardly much of a one."

Mr. Holmes hides his grin behind a cloud of cigar smoke. "Quite, Lestrade. Quite. I don't suppose I need to ask why."

Lestrade shoots Mr. Holmes the odd look which that comment deserves. It's a far more personal remark than they're usually allowed under the terms of their _detente_, but not offensively so; if anything, it's friendlier, more open than is typical between them. As Mr. Holmes has invited the comparison, however, Lestrade provides it. "I don't suppose you do, Mr. Holmes. I can't imagine you'd be any more pleased to give up detecting than I am. I'd be surprised to see you quitting in nineteen _fifty_ three, much less nineteen _aught_ three." Lestrade sighs.

Mr. Holmes squirms for just a moment, the movement too incongruous to register in Lestrade's mind for what it is until a fair while afterwards. "Isn't there anything you're looking forward to, in leaving the force? Surely even _your_ imagination can conjure _some_ pleasing prospect for a life outside the Yard." It's a tease rather than a barb, too worn down with overuse to sting.

"Mayhaps I'll find it in time," Lestrade replies, with patently false good cheer. And then he drops the act. "But I've always hated not having anything to do. It wears on a man, worse than work by a long sight." He notes that Mr. Holmes is eying him with the paralyzing gaze which he has not used on Lestrade in many a year, now. It's that look of considering all the angles. With that expression on Mr. Holmes's face, Lestrade knows well enough to be ready for _something_, but, vague as that warning is, he can't really be prepared for what Mr. Holmes actually asks.

"In that case, Lestrade, how would you care for a new line of employment? And not so very far off of the old, if it comes to that?"

Lestrade can't even begin to answer that question. "Not for you, Mr. Holmes?" he manages.

Holmes chuckles. "Good God, no, Lestrade--I'd not propose to put you through such torment as _that_. We've had our differences, you and I, but I've never _hated_ you, man." They both laugh at that. "No, for Mycroft. You remember my brother, of course."

"Of course. You Holmeses aren't easy to forget." Lestrade stops to consider the notion of working for Mr. Mycroft (a name he uses in his own mind, just to keep the two brothers straight). He's easier to deal with than Mr. Sherlock Holmes is, by a long shot, but Lestrade can't see what he could possibly do for a man like that. "What kind of work would he need me for, Mr. Holmes?"

For the second time in a few minutes Lestrade finds himself the victim of that analyzing look.

"I do not believe you were informed at the time of that little adventure of the submarine plans, Lestrade, of just exactly what Mycroft's role in the government is."

"Well...it's _something_ important, anyhow. He mentioned the Prime Minister as if it were nothing."

Holmes smiles. "That was entirely for your benefit, and Watson's. In reality, Mycroft has as little to do with the Prime Minister as he can get away with. He considers the man an appalling waste of time."

"And how does he usually spend his time, then?" Lestrade goes straight to the heart of the matter, knowing that Mr. Holmes can spend hours dancing around a point if a man doesn't ask him direct.

"Do you know anything about the Greeks, Lestrade? The ancient ones, that is." And then there's times, Lestrade thinks ruefully, when Mr. Holmes won't come to the point even if a man _does_ ask him direct.

"Not much, Mr. Holmes. Learnt Homer in school, of course. Though I always preferred the Romans."

"Naturally you did," Mr. Holmes says. Lestrade analyzes the statement, decides that the insult-to-compliment ratio on it isn't above one to one, and lets it go. "Probably you will understand me, at any rate, when I say that Mycroft is the Oracle at Delphi. Important men come to him for advice on important problems; he hands it down; they go their way. Most men have no idea how he reaches his conclusions, and to them it all looks like magic, but his pronouncements prove justified such a tremendous proportion of the time that his words are valued regardless. He actually does it, however, by setting out to learn everything, and to remember everything he learns. The only magic is in his ability to connect ideas which others would never think of as relating, and thereby to see the larger workings of the world as a single breathing entity."

Lestrade's skepticism is writ plain on his face. "He makes guesses for a living. For the government."

Mr. Holmes's lip quivers. "I wondered if you would quite approve. I assure you, his work is eminently practical. That there is _someone_ in the government who understands in full the intertwined messes of both our domestic and international policies goes far in the saving of both funds and lives."

As much as Lestrade finds it difficult to endorse a profession so far off the map as 'man who knows everything,' he has to concede that Mr. Holmes is very likely right on that particular point, and nods in acknowledgement of it. "But what has any of that got to do with me, Mr. Holmes?"

"It cannot have escaped your notice that Mycroft is not a very active man. He needs reliable sources for his information, and few people know London as well or can travel through it as broadly and as unobtrusively as you can, Lestrade. Mycroft needs someone to do his observation, that he may do the deduction, and you have a certain facility for gathering and presenting facts that could be very useful to my brother. Mycroft's little operation is...in a period of expansion. He will be needing trustworthy men on his side."

It is by far and away the kindest thing Mr. Holmes has ever said to him, _and_ a surprisingly appealing offer. Nothing can replace policework, not for Lestrade, but chasing down information has always been one of his favorite parts of the job, and the thing he was best at, to boot. There is something about a good hard fact, the way it feels rolling about in his mind, the quiet joy of noting it down and seeing it in black-and-white, set down for posterity, that is better than almost any other pleasure this life has to offer. And anything, _anything_ would be better than idleness.

"Let me be sure I have it clear," Lestrade says, buying himself time to chew the thing over, puffing at his cigar to gain a few more seconds still. "Mr. Holmes--the other Mr. Holmes--needs someone to gather information for him, in London. What kind of information? And, well, why can't you do it, Mr. Holmes? You get to know about _everything_ goes on in this city, sooner or later--and usually sooner."

"My blushes, Lestrade," Holmes says, with that peculiar little smile that proves him well-pleased by the compliment, but then something else comes over his face and he's hesitating all over again. Lestrade is used to Mr. Holmes being secretive, of course, but this is another thing altogether. Whatever it is that he's been dancing around all this time, Lestrade wishes to heaven he'd just come out and say it.

"Mr. Holmes," Lestrade finds himself saying, without precisely meaning to, "whatever it is you've been dancing around all this time, I wish to heaven you'd just come out and say it."

There is a long pause, both of them frankly shocked at the words that have just emerged from Lestrade's mouth. And then Mr. Holmes is laughing that hearty, whole-body laugh that doesn't come over him but once in a very long while. "Well done Lestrade!" he gasps through his mirth.

"Oh, come off it," Lestrade grumbles, but he's fighting back a smile himself, and doesn't win for long.

Mr. Holmes lets his laughter run its course, but as it settles his face turns almost sad, solemnity lurking in the twitching of his cheeks and the pursing of his lips and the distant cast of his eyes. "The thing I have been 'dancing around,' as you so picturesquely put it," Holmes says, trying and failing to properly smile, "is that you are not the only one giving up the chase, Lestrade. I will not be able to inform Mycroft about the city because I will not be _in_ the city."

It hits Lestrade like a brick to the face. "But, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade stutters. He's confounded to incoherency by this unbelievable piece of news, and says the first thing that comes to mind without stopping to think about it beforehand. "Mr. Holmes, you _love_ London!"

Mr. Holmes is surprised, for a moment, and then looks at Lestrade with something very like respect, saying thoughtfully, "D'you know, Lestrade, that neither Mycroft nor Watson, no matter how well they know me, managed to put his finger on it quite so squarely as that? I oughtn't to be surprised, I suppose. She's your city, too."

By now Lestrade's brain has caught up to his mouth, and the still less credible implications have dawned. "You can't mean you're giving up detective work, Mr. Holmes, _surely_? You'll still be investigating, wherever it is you're going?"

"I am afraid not," Holmes replies, not even trying to smile now. "And the where is Sussex. To devote myself to my chemical researches, in a locale where some of my more...particular experiments need disturb no one but myself."

"There's more to it than that." Lestrade would wager his favourite hat on that much. For Mr. Holmes to leave both London and detective work...it's hardly less a destruction of who the man _is_ than eating a bullet would be. Lestrade is damned if he's going to watch Sherlock Holmes throw away his entire life without at least knowing the reason why. He's got far too much invested in the man for that. "For years you've been fiddling with the kinds of chemicals I go knock-kneed even thinking about right here in the middle of London."

"These are not quite the same sort of thing," Mr. Holmes replies. "You see, Lestrade..." This time it is Mr. Holmes who uses his cigar as a method of delay, "This is not going to sound entirely credible, I'm afraid, but I suppose you are accustomed to that by now, given the source. The reason I am leaving London for Sussex is precisely the same reason why you ought to accept that job with Mycroft: because my brother sees a war on the horizon, a war the likes of which Europe has not known since the age of Napoleon, and because the actions of a few men now may have profound consequences for England in the years and decades to come. I have no desire whatever to leave London and my 'usual petty puzzles of the police-court.' But Mycroft tells me, and he is never wrong about these things, that at the present moment Britain and her allies have a fifty-three-and-a-half percent chance of emerging victorious from this coming conflict. He insists that, if I spend the intervening years in researching the various methods by which chemical weaponry may be combated, those odds will raise to fifty-four percent even. Half a percentage point is hardly long odds, I grant you, but it may mean thousands or tens of thousands of lives, British and otherwise. I am an admittedly selfish man, Lestrade, but I cannot in good conscience...well, you understand what I am trying to say."

"Yes," Lestrade says softly, "I understand." He's still fighting to take it all in: a modern-day prophet living in Pall Mall, an impending world-shaking conflict, and _Mr. Holmes leaving London_, all on the same day when Lestrade's life was already scheduled to be turned upside down. It's far too much to truly comprehend, at least all at once, but Mr. Holmes seems to understand that, and for the next few minutes he permits them to sit in silence as Lestrade's brain whirls and whirls and tries to sort everything where it belongs. When Mr. Holmes finally does speak--just after snuffing out his cigar on his bootheel and tossing the stub into the waste-paper basket--his voice is almost gentle.

"Now you see why it will be so important for Mycroft to have dependable allies in the near future, Lestrade. He will be fighting to keep abreast of a hundred important happenings a day on the Continent, but he cannot permit himself to lose sight of goings-on nearer home. The presence of foreign agents in London will quadruple at the least in the next few years, for one. There will no doubt be attempts made to smuggle in both people and supplies via the river, and an ear to the ports will be essential. And simply having a finger on the pulse of the city, knowing what sort of mood London is in, will be more important than ever. It's a job for a man who is experienced, unobtrusive and observant, and you have been known, on rare occasions," here Holmes shoots Lestrade a cheeky little smile, "to demonstrate all of those qualities. You'll never need feel that you've lost something, in leaving the force--or not so much, at any rate. It will be the most important work you ever do." Mr. Holmes's manner is unusually uncertain as he finishes with, "You will at least consider it, won't you, Lestrade?"

It comes to Lestrade suddenly, as important ideas do, that this tentative concern of Mr. Holmes's has very little to do with the fate of the nation. There's many men could do the job he's offering as well as Lestrade, and probably a fair few could do it better. But Mr. Holmes _cares_ what happens to Lestrade, cares that he has some way of spending his time, cares whether or not Lestrade ends up an empty shell like Gregson is fast becoming--and, no doubt, wants to know that someone will look after Mr. Mycroft once he leaves the city, though Lestrade cannot imagine how such a feat as _that_ is to be accomplished.

"If your brother thinks I'm the right man for the job, then I can't see why I shouldn't give it a try," he replies, and watches Mr. Holmes press his hands together and give that particular smile that he reserves for a scheme that's come off exactly as he planned it. Mr. Holmes is never so willing to talk as when he's just got his own way, and he's in an extraordinarily open mood today as it is. As it's a day for endings and beginnings, and none of the rules seem, somehow, to apply just now, Lestrade dares to ask a question he's had his teeth in for a decade.

"Mr. Holmes...why me? No, I don't mean for this work with the other Mr. Holmes. I mean...in all these years, and especially since," Lestrade considers finding a more palatable euphemism, and then decides that it's been long enough, and there's no use tiptoeing around it any more, "since you returned from the dead, it's me you've turned to more often than not among the Yarders, me you called in when you needed an official hand. Doctor Watson said in his books that you thought Gregson was the smartest of us all. If you'd wanted the man most willing to listen to your theories, we all know that'd have been Hopkins. And if it was a keen and able-bodied fellow you were after, well, you'd hardly have picked out the runt of the litter, as can't run on top of it. So why's it been me you chose?"

Mr. Holmes looks as though he wishes he still had his cigar, something to prove a distraction, but in its absence he glances down at his empty hands and then back up at Lestrade, almost defiantly at first, and then with quiet consideration. "I could say that it was because by '90 you were the only man at the Yard still willing to stand up to me, that I needed someone willing to challenge my theories--and that was certainly a part of it. The more important reason, however, is a good deal simpler. When Watson and I first moved in at Baker Street, almost every policeman in London tramped in and out of our sitting room before I brought him with me on the Hope case, but you were the only one who bothered to introduce himself to the doctor. When he married Miss Morstan, you were the only Yarder to show his face. And when she died, so Mycroft tells me, you were the only inspector at the funeral." The desire to look anywhere other than at Lestrade wins over Mr. Holmes then, and he pulls his matchbox from his pocket and begins to flip it between his fingers. "When Watson has needed a friend, you have been there for him, Lestrade. I don't claim that my memory is perfect; of the things I have known in this life, I have forgotten my share, like any other man. But I will never forget that."

Lestrade finds that Mr. Holmes is not the only one staring at his own fingers. He refuses to speak until he's got at least half a chance of his voice coming steady, and Mr. Holmes seems to have run out of things to say, so for some minutes there is silence again. Finally, Lestrade gets up the courage to catch Mr. Holmes's eye, and to ask, "Mr. Holmes...you and the doctor..."

It's a hard look Mr. Holmes gives him then--not angry, but piercingly intense. "You are, as you pointed out yourself, Lestrade, no longer an agent of the Law," he says finally. "If you truly wish to know the answer to that question, you may ask it."

Lestrade studies Mr. Holmes's face for a long moment, notes the minute twitch at the corner of his mouth that Lestrade recognizes as nervousness. And then Lestrade is smiling. "Thank you for the offer, Mr. Holmes," he says simply. Mr. Holmes quirks his head, waiting for Lestrade to say more, and then he realizes that Lestrade has no intention of adding a thing, and he's smiling back. The knock on the door does nothing whatever to dampen the mood.

"Come in, Watson," Mr. Holmes singsongs, leaning back in his chair to turn the door-handle. Lestrade tries to be annoyed at Mr. Holmes inviting other people into _his_ office, but finds that he simply doesn't have it in him, just at the present.

"Holmes, _really_. I realize I should have made it explicit that our bargain included you at least saying hello and congratulations to Lestrade, but I had thought that...oh, hallo, Lestrade," he finishes abruptly, catching sight of the ex-inspector in the far chair.

"Afternoon, doctor," Lestrade says, still smiling.

"I will admit, Watson, that neither 'hello' nor 'congratulations' has yet passed my lips _ipsissima verba_, but I believe the general sentiment of felicitation has been well-expressed," Mr. Holmes says, as he unfolds himself from his chair. "Which means, I think, that we can now be getting on. Come along, Lestrade." He stretches out a hand, which Lestrade takes more from instinct than intent, permitting Mr. Holmes to pull him from his own seat.

"Where are we going, Mr. Holmes?" Lestrade asks.

"To Baker Street, naturally," Holmes replies. "One of our clients sent us a bottle of Napoleon brandy, Lestrade; you really _must_ try it. It's positively exquisite."

Mr. Holmes's lip quivers dangerously as Lestrade mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _ideé fixe_, but Dr. Watson is too busy looking askance at Mr. Holmes to hear. "Holmes, we can't drag Lestrade away from his own party. It would be..."

"The most heroic act we have ever performed," Mr. Holmes interjects, opening the office door, checking the hall for watchful eyes, and ushering Lestrade and Watson out in front of him. "Isn't that so, Lestrade?"

"Absolutely right, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade agrees. "I promise you, doctor, you'd be doing me a kindness. Everyone already _knows_ Mr. Holmes has no manners; if they can blame him kidnapping me, it'll let me get out of here with some shreds of my own reputation in tact."

"There you have it, Watson," Mr. Holmes grins.

"And to think, Lestrade, I depend upon you to be a _good_ influence on him," Dr. Watson says with a sigh, shaking his head sadly as they creep their way through the corridors of New Scotland Yard.

"Nonsense. That's your job, doctor. To be a good influence on the both of us." Lestrade leads them down a side corridor to a little-used door leading out into the mews behind the Yard. Even London air tastes sweet when it carries freedom with it.

"Is it indeed?" Dr. Watson asks. "And what _is_ your job, then, Lestrade?"

"Lestrade's job," Mr. Holmes calls in the doctor's direction, tugging both of his companions towards the street, "is to disagree with my theories, sympathize with your frustrations, and be our practical man. Would you say that's about the shape of it, Lestrade?"

"_Nearly_, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade replies, while Dr. Watson waves them down a cab. "Though I'd put it far more simply than that."

"Oh? And how would you put it?"

"To be a friend," Lestrade says, and smiles back at Holmes and Watson as he climbs into their cab.


End file.
